Camp North End Tenants React Cautiously to Property’s Sale

Sometimes standing on business means standing up for your actual business.

“Yes, we acknowledge Camp North End is sold,” Davita Galloway, co-founder of Black-owned creative business DUPP&SWAT, posted on her business’s Instagram account on Feb. 14, two days after tenants at the sprawling, 76-acres campus were informed that a new management company was taking over as part-owners of the site.

Galloway’s post served notice that DUPP&SWATT, along with the property’s other long term tenants and more recent arrivals are keeping tabs on a situation best described as “evolving.”

“We speak for many on campus,” Galloway wrote in an email to Queen City Nerve on the same day she made the post. She called for transparent development plans, equitable leases and long-term stability for Camp North End’s creative tenants.

What she hopes to prevent is a scenario familiar to cities and neighborhoods across the country in which artists and community-centered businesses move into and enhance underdeveloped properties, making said areas desirable, only to be priced out by developers lured by the artsy cachet those businesses fostered in the first place.

“Creative businesses are not placeholders,” Galloway wrote. “Charlotte deserves development that honors the people who shape its soul.” (Galloway’s statement was subsequently published as an open letter by QCity Metro.)

ATCO Properties & Management, the company that purchased and developed Camp North End in 2016, emailed campus tenants on Feb. 12 informing them of the sale to Atlanta-based real estate investment firm Jamestown LP.

Under the sale agreement, ATCO’s current on-site Camp North End team remains in place as Jamestown employees. That team arranged a meeting with Camp North End tenants and Jamestown representatives the following day, Feb. 13.

However, not all owners could make it. One of those owners who was unable to attend is Galloway, who subsequently posted her reaction to the sale.

Galloway tells Queen City Nerve that people sometimes see the cultural and creative atmosphere fostered by businesses like DUPP&SWATT and conflate those businesses with hobbies.

“I think people have a tendency to use us to create this magic, make an area interesting and popping, and then we can be tossed aside once our job is done,” she says. “We are a legitimate business. People need to respect our business entity, our business genre, [and] the creative industry as a whole.”

ATCO has appeared to understand this principle since its team began building out the campus nearly a decade ago.

“From day one at Camp North End nine years ago, we’ve been intentional about inviting Charlotte’s best — businesses, organizations, artists, makers, and musicians — to set the tone for this place,” said Varian Shrum, Camp North End’s chief of staff under ATCO, in an email to Queen City Nerve.

Shrum has been retained by Jamestown as an on-site employee. She notes that Camp North End’s intent has always been to highlight Charlotte’s culture and to create a signature destination that authentically represents a ross-section of the Queen City.

“That focus isn’t changing,” Shrum insists.

Tenants meet with new ownership

After purchasing Camp North End in 2016 for $5.9 million from Eckerd Corp., ATCO started converting the property’s buildings into retail and office spaces. DUPP&SWATT was one of the first tenants recruited by ATCO.

DUPP&SWATT has evolved and expanded since moving to Camp North End in 2016, when the only other tenants were Prism Motorcycle Supply Co., HEX Coffee and Black-owned art gallery and studio space BLK MRKT.

Co-owned by Davita Galloway alongside her brother Dion, DUPP&SWATT encompasses a creative studio, an event space and an art gallery. The business has also opened Fresh Produce boutique and Cell Therapy beauty and barber shop at Camp North End.

After seeing Galloway’s Instagram post, Shrum reached out and set up another meeting on Feb. 25, where Camp North End tenants could talk with Blake Fortson, Jamestown’s vice president of creative and marketing.

“Having had those conversations, I’m definitely feeling a little better about what has transpired,” said Galloway, who has also had conversations with Damon Hemmerdinger, ATCO’s co-president, about the reasons for the property’s sale.

Speaking to Axios, Jamestown president Michael Phillips said the company is open to bringing more national retail chains to Camp North End. Galloway says Fortson acknowledges that Jamestown, which has developed adaptive reuse projects like Atlanta’s Ponce City Market and Brooklyn’s Industry City as well as local projects like Charlotte’s Optimist Hall, has relationships with big retail chains, but he also stressed Jamestown’s support of local small businesses.

“He expressed the need to retain cultural entities and businesses like DUPP&SWATT,” Galloway offers. ‘He seemed to understand the need to preserve certain spaces.”

Dean Hardy of Hardy Boys Records was at the meeting with Fortson. His business, Hardy Boys Records, has a location in South End, but its flagship location was launched at Camp North End in October 2023. Hardy, too, had missed the previous meeting on Feb. 13.

“I felt like Davita specifically and others of us that had concerns were able to express them freely,” Hardy says. “We’ve invested lots of time and money not only in Hardy Boys but also in our community, so orange and even red flags go up anytime you have a major change like this.” Hardy felt calmed by the meeting, saying he’s happy that ATCO’s on-site staff is staying on at Camp North End.

“I fully trust Varian,” he says. “She’s been a huge promoter for us.”

Fortson also told the small group of business owners present at the Feb. 25 meeting that Jamestown will bring in more support staff and additional funds to complete property development plans that ATCO had already started.
Galloway confirms that ATCO’s goals have always included constructing hotels, housing and offices on the site.

The firm continues to own and operate Kinship, a multifamily development with ground-floor retail on the property.

“The larger plan for Camp North End, even when we moved on campus, was … for it to exist as essentially its own ecosystem — places of work, places to play, places to live, places to eat, all of those things,” says Galloway, who counts herself as cautiously optimistic after the recent meeting.

“Nothing is written down yet in terms of extended leases,” Galloway cautions. “I think that’s why Varian and a lot of the ATCO team is still around just to serve as guardrails. They understand why Camp North End was developed and curated it a certain way.”

A bigger Camp North End is coming, but will it be better?

Hardy says Fortson did not share Jamestown’s long-term development plans at the meeting, but ATCO’s website announces that Camp North End will get a lot bigger in the coming years.

The century-old site, which housed a factory that manufactured Ford Model-A automobiles in 1924 and missiles for the US Army in the 1960s, is slated to expand from roughly 500,000 square feet of development spread across 35 acres to 3.2 million square feet of development across 41 acres.

Ambitious plans would fill vacant buildings and open parking lots, adding restaurants, a grocery store, a rock climbing facility and more.

“I hope the new ownership recognizes the importance of the community that ATCO so carefully helped to cultivate,” echoes Amy Herman, co-founder of Goodyear Arts, an artist-run space that provides paid studio residencies to local artists and free cutting-edge programming to the public.

Herman attended the Feb. 13 meeting where Shrum and Hemmerdinger were present, along with Jamestown’s Fortson and Dana Griffin, Jamestown’s director of asset management for the Northeast and West Coast regions.

At the meeting, which Herman describes as an introductory town hall, tenants expressed concerns about maintaining community, diversity and support for small businesses — all the things that have contributed to Camp North End’s success thus far. She feels Jamestown was receptive to that message.

Herman expects changes at Camp North End, but change has been a way of life for Goodyear Arts. The arts collective, which occupied two buildings that were slated for demolition before coming to Camp North End in 2017, has always seen itself as a transient organization.

“ATCO and Damon offered Goodyear Arts a much more permanent home than we ever anticipated,” Herman says. “That being said, the project has never relied on a permanent home.”

Herman anticipates that changes will take place over a long timeline. She expects the property’s new owners will fill empty spaces on campus before addressing those that already house tenants.

Seirin Nagano is the director of Goodyear Arts as well as an artist. She was teaching at UNC Charlotte, where she is a Japanese instructor, and was not at the Feb. 13 meeting. Nagano says she was relieved to hear that the ATCO staff would continue working at Camp North End.

“I hope that will give the Jamestown folks enough time to learn what kind of culture and community [has been] built at Camp North End,” Nagano says.

As former co-owner of Hygge Coworking, Garrett Tichy was one of the first operating tenants at Camp North End. He sold Hygge a few years ago and opened Seemingly Overzealous, a dairy-, egg- and gluten-free ice cream shop, in Camp North End in May 2020.

“I’ve seen it go from a desolate, somewhat terrifying property to alive and bustling,” Tichy says.

Tichy went into the Feb. 13 meeting not expecting much, and says Hemmerdinger and Shrum spoke more than Jamestown’s team. On the plus side, Tichy sees Jamestown as a well-capitalized, well-resourced development company that knows what to do with properties like Camp North End.

However, he understands Galloway’s concerns.

“If you’re a community-based entity [like DUPP&SWATT] that has been integral in helping Camp North End define its vibe and bring people onto the property, it’s justifiable to [wonder about] this big entity coming in and spending a bunch of money,” Tichy says.

Jamestown is going to want to recoup its cost, and it wouldn’t be out of character for a big company to take the path of least resistance toward liquidity by signing up a bunch of big chain stores that would ultimately kill what makes Camp North End special.

“I think Jamestown would be completely out of their minds to not consider how important some of these organizations — Goodyear Arts, DUPP&SWATT, BLK MRKT … [are] to the future of Camp North End,” Tichy maintains.

He believes it’s best for Camp North End’s tenants to avoid burning bridges over hypotheticals so as to keep a seat at the table.

“We are important to Camp North End and we are more powerful as a collective if we are still here,” Tichy says.

A time for cautious optimism

Will Jenkins, who co-owns longtime Camp North End tenant and Black arts incubator BLK MRKT with Dammit Wesley, is still not sure what to think about the Feb. 13 meeting he attended.

“For myself and Wes, we’re still looking at how things are going currently and seeing where we fit into the fold,” Jenkins says.

Jamestown owned and managed a stake in Birkdale Village for approximately one year and, since 2020, the company has been a joint owner of Optimist Hall. In 2022, Optimist Hall began charging customers for parking. The introduction of paid parking at Camp North End could pose a problem, Jenkins says.

“Paid parking is one of the big concerns, because it can already be limited out here as it is,” he maintains. “The Camp is one of those places where people come and just hang out. I see people out here working from home from outside on the benches. If they had to pay for parking, I feel like a lot of that would go away.”

People taking their time, and not just dashing in and out of a business to do their shopping, is one of the intangible positives of Camp North End. It makes Camp North End closer to a neighborhood and less like an outdoor shopping mall, Jenkins maintains.

“It’s a community place,” he offers. “You can bring your family. I’ve seen people come on their first dates here. I’ve seen people propose here.”

“It’s one of the few places I feel safe just letting my daughter run around,” Tichy says. “From the landscaping to the art, it’s hard to not smile. [Coming to Camp North End] is such a fun, cool, unique event.”

“I think it’s a place where people can be themselves and enjoy the culture of Charlotte,” Hardy says.

“Camp North End has challenged themselves to keep it weird and keep it interesting,” Herman says. ‘It’s one of the reasons it remains successful.”

Shrum maintains that Jamestown, with all the resources and funding at its disposal, will only enhance the campus’s appeal.

“Maintaining Camp North End’s character and scrappy, experimental spirit is a competitive advantage that our new partners fully recognize,” she says. “Jamestown brings the capacity to help Camp reach its full potential while staying true to our DNA. They add energy, resources and deep experience in adaptive reuse and placemaking that can help our tenant community flourish.”

Read more: OPINION: Tipsy Pickle Is a Bad Direction for Camp North End (2023)

Until tenants can see more of Jamestown’s plans in action, Galloway maintains a cautiously optimistic approach.

“My brother and I, we definitely want to remain hopeful, but we also understand that they can literally say anything, right?” she says.

Galloway knows of people who had businesses in Jamestown’s Ponce City Market who are no longer there. At the end of the day, Jamestown is in business, and business is all about the money.

“I’m not opposed to them bringing certain larger brands over, because I think that will add to the appeal of Camp North End and bring additional foot traffic,” she says. “But I believe there’s a world in which mixed tenancy works. We small, local businesses, we have a platform, and we have a voice, too.”

If Camp North End can thread the needle of mixing commerce with culture, it could remain a special mixed-use development. Not a compound of overpriced, soulless housing and character-free shops, but a community space that attracts unique creatives with a strong, diverse artist community, plus a commercial environment that welcomes the most interesting businesses in Charlotte.

Above all, Camp North End can break the cycle of creatives transforming urban wastelands into creative oases only to be kicked out the places they built in the name of bigger profits.